Bivvy

“Right,” I announced, swaying slightly in the near dark as I swirled the dregs of my can. “I’m going to crack open another beer for the final push to the summit”. My brother leant forward, bracing himself for a hearty guffaw. “You do realise that you said exactly the same thing, standing on exactly the […]

This month I have a bit of climate chat for you. As you can see from the accompanying photo of my ice-encrusted bivvy bag, my January sleep was chilly but not particularly wintery. Not only is there no snow at my bivvy spot, there is barely a scrap of the white stuff to be seen […]

Here we are at the start of another year. I have resolved to make 2017 a year of writing. This blog will be updated at least fortnightly and I am going to complete two longer projects, a non-fiction book that I started back in 2014 and a short e-book on my 2016 mountaineering trip to […]

After dinner on the 26th of February I felt inclined to settle down with a well earned drink. But it wasn’t to be, for the weather was settled and I was running out of time to complete my year of outdoor sleeping. I quickly packed my bag, drove a short distance and started climbing up the snowy […]

Hammock camp by Loch Beinn A’Mheadhoin I woke in a swaying hammock, too scared to peep over the rim in case four hundred pounds of muscle, tooth and claw was staring back at me. When I first attempted to sleep in a hammock, 13 years ago in the Tolumne Meadows area of Yosemite, this fear […]

I found myself reaching for the word ‘Zen’ to describe the state of mind induced during and following my recent mountaineering trip to Morocco. But what exactly is Zen? And why did this single three letter word seem to be a more accurate summation of my experience than any I might aspire to craft from the 8000 words […]

Nowadays we spend so little time outside in the environment. It’s all too easy to pass precious family time in the shaded indoors, shouting at the children to watch less TV and to clear up mounds of plastic crap that until a generation ago didn’t exist. Only in the outdoors, in the absence of such vile intrusions, […]

Late evening sun on the cliffs of Coire an Lochain For years I have toyed with the idea of a midweek bivvy in the long days that surround midsummer. The thought of having to rise at an absurdly early hour to rush into work for 0800 has always put me off. This year I made an […]

Took on a mountaintop bivvy on Saturday night on Sgurr Coire nan Eiricheallach, a hill at the to the north of Loch Quoich that is commonly climbed before the nearby Munro, Sgurr a ‘Mhaoriach. An island in the loch was previously occupied by an outlaw who shared my name – Ewan Macfie. He refused to […]